IMPACTFUL GOVERNMENT CAREERS
Salary Range:
£37,295 - £44,724 National: £37,295 min -£41,425 max, London: £40,262 min -£44,724 max. For details of our pay on appointment policy, please see below under the heading ‘Salary’.
Department and Location:
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Bristol, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York
Advert Closing Date:
30/10/2023
Contract Type:
Permanent
Available Working Pattern:
Compressed Hours, Flexible Working, Full-time, Part-time
Civil Service Jobs Reference:
318185
Job Description:
You will be part of the Outcome Delivery and Insights team within Defra’s Strategic Change Projects Directorate. We support Defra to deliver its outcomes through four workstreams:
We deliver our Outcomes Programme, designed to improve the way Defra delivers its outcomes. This includes driving consistency across the department in planning and reporting against outcome delivery, as well as enhancing outcome governance, systems and processes to drive accountability and performance.
We improve outcome delivery by advising strategy, policy and programme teams on developing and delivering plans for achieving outcomes, including solving difficult delivery challenges.
We run a monthly meeting of the Defra Executive Committee where it meets as “Delivery Committee”, focused on how well Defra delivers its outcomes, including major programmes. We provide analysis to the committee, briefing the Permanent Secretary and responsible Director General in advance. We work with teams across the department to make sure papers and discussions are impactful.
We design and build analytical systems and tools to support decision making (drawing on analysts from a sister-team).
Our work often involves working with Defra’s senior leaders and teams across the department to help better understand outcome delivery challenges and provide pragmatic solutions to challenging delivery problems. Our input is critical in delivering Defra’s challenging and important agenda and in enabling Defra’s top boards and senior leaders to make accurate, effective, and timely decisions.
We are hiring two SEOs to focus on the Outcomes Programme ,outcome delivery advisory work and analytically driven decision making (workstreams 1, 2 and 4), with the potential to support across the other workstreams and wider directorate work based on interest. The role offers an excellent opportunity for you to work in a high-profile and stretching job at the heart of Defra where we work across organisational boundaries to drive better delivery. You will have exposure to senior leaders across Defra. You will be expected to deliver high-quality and fast-paced insights and problem-solving required to help address the department’s most significant outcome delivery challenges. Defra has an ambitious agenda, requiring a radical shift in the way the department establishes and manages its delivery priorities. We have a highly complex portfolio of work that requires quality advice. The department is also committed to radically enhancing the way data is used to influence key delivery decisions – an ambition where this team plays a central role.
As a delivery advisor you will help mature Defra’s central approach to outcome delivery and work with a range of strategy, policy and delivery teams across Defra Group to enhance delivery through driving consistency and solving challenges. Some of the activities that this role will deliver include:
Advise teams across the department on putting in place or strengthening delivery pathways for targets within our outcomes framework.
Develop and implement, often through influencing others, improvements to Defra’s outcome delivery systems, processes and governance.
Engage with strategy, policy and delivery stakeholders to understand context and key issues, and to co-develop solutions to delivery challenges.
Help develop a structured approach to addressing these challenges that engages relevant stakeholders and leverages analysis, standards and best practice.
Analyse and present information to deliver the insights required by senior stakeholders.
Provide high-quality briefings to senior stakeholders.
Review and evaluate your work and the work of the team to develop improved methodologies and ways of working.
Understand products from across the Defra policy landscape to build robust evidence for decision-making.
This list isn’t exhaustive but provides an overview of the activities the role will carry out.
Person Specification:
The successful candidate will need to be self-motivated and adaptable, with the ability to balance and prioritise across a broad range of subject areas, as well as the ability to quickly grasp delivery issues and establish clear and pragmatic approaches to address these.
The candidate will need to demonstrate the following essential criteria throughout the selection process:
A track record of solving difficult problems / challenges.
Strong relationship management and influencing skills.
An ability to think strategically.
An ability to deliver insights from written and numerical sources for senior colleagues and/or clients to demanding deadlines.
A self-starter able to work through complexity and ambiguity.
An ability to rapidly get-up to speed with multiple new policy/outcome areas and engage confidently with experts in those areas.